Chapter 382

Chapter 382
## Chapter 382: The Savior

The deepest reaches of the chasm.

The location where the Heavenly Demon had shattered the earth and plunged them into the depths was a place far more horrific than anyone could have anticipated.

‘This… this is…’

A suffocating, poisonous fog.

Gasping for clean air, Iarin surveyed her surroundings.

They hadn’t simply been buried under the rock; they had been transported to an entirely different realm.

However, Iarin appeared to be the sole survivor of the fall.

The companions who had stood by her side were nowhere to be found.

Instead, the landscape was cluttered with something else entirely.

“… Is this a tomb for the masses?”

Nothing but corpses.

An endless sea of bodies lay there, all decayed and warped by the corrosive miasma of the abyss.

These weren’t just humans; they were monsters of unrecognizable shapes and sizes.

The putrefying remains were the source of the never-ending toxic clouds.

Was this the final destination for everything that perished within this dark void?

“Grrr.”

“Guooooh.”

Iarin’s features pulled into a grimace.

The shapes she had assumed were mere cadavers began to emit low, guttural moans.

They were so ravaged by rot and mutation that it seemed impossible for life to persist within them.

Yet, they drew breath.

It was as if their every sound was a desperate plea for the mercy of death.

At that moment, notifications flared in her mind.

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A minimum of eight Hidden Traits was required to fended off the Abyss’s Miasma.

But with the group split apart, the benefit of ‘shared possession’ had vanished.

Iarin was left with only her individual 5 Hidden Traits.

Worse yet, the environmental toxins were draining her ‘Fragment of the Golden Rule’ at an accelerated pace.

At this velocity, Iarin wouldn’t survive more than ten hours.

“A Resident of the Abyss.”

Were these wretched things, caught between life and death, the ones called ‘Residents of the Abyss’?

The thought was chilling.

She had to escape this place, no matter the cost.

If she could reunite with even one teammate and bolster her count of Hidden Traits, she might be able to withstand the poison.

But a more critical obstacle blocked her path.

‘My abilities are locked.’

None of her skills would trigger.

The versatile, multi-faceted powers that usually allowed her to adapt to any crisis were completely suppressed.

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She froze.

‘Advent Area?’

What kind of entity had manifested here to cause such an effect?

The subsequent information was even more staggering.

The idea that every skill at or below the 5-star rank was unusable was a death sentence.

‘Humanity hasn’t even produced a 5-star transcendent yet.’

Raw power levels and peak-tier skills meant nothing here.

To be 5-star meant one had undergone the process of ‘transcendence’ five distinct times.

Humans typically achieved this by consuming a goddess’s star, while monsters evolved through shedding their skins or devouring superior predators.

Skills followed the same hierarchy.

A 1-star transcendent wielded 1-star techniques; one had to reach the fifth stage of transcendence to utilize 5-star abilities.

The two had to be in sync.

However, the term ‘or lower’ meant that even 5-star skills—which didn’t even exist among humans yet—were useless.

To use any power in this zone, one needed to be at least 6-star.

Demanding 6-star power when not even a 5-star existed was effectively an execution order.

‘What are my options?’

Iarin rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

She couldn’t even imagine what kind of being could exert such an overwhelming influence just by being present.

To seal a vast territory with such impossible requirements suggested a presence of that level or perhaps even higher.

She didn’t know if this force was hostile or friendly.

But if it was an enemy, the future was pitch black.

Especially for the human race.

‘The ceiling for humans is absolute.’

Unlike the diverse races of the world, humans were bound by a specific limit.

This was because there were only 32 total shards of the goddess’s star in existence.

Attempting to transcend using the corrupted stars dropped by demons wasn’t true ascension; therefore, genuine transcendence could only happen 32 times across the entire species.

Only a handful of people could ever hope to transcend a few times.

This was why no human could ever be immune to a seal of this magnitude.

‘Ascending the Tower of the Rift to raise the level limit is a type of transcendence, but…’

Was that a viable path?

Furthermore, the Tower of the Rift was likely to devolve into a brutal interspecies conflict.

It was a Darwinian age of survival.

Considering humans started with a level cap of only 10, they had a mountain to climb.

They were in a place they were never meant to reach at this stage of their development.

The abyss had come far too early for mankind.

“… There is no path forward.”

Her powers were gone.

The toxins were seeping into her pores every second.

She tried to keep moving, but she noticed the Golden Rule was being eaten away twice as fast every time she took a step.

She only maintained her stoicism because of her iron will; she could easily imagine the panic and despair the others must be feeling.

The only fate awaiting them was to turn into a ‘Resident of the Abyss.’

There were no alternatives.

… Wait, there was one.

She could end her own life before the transformation took hold.

Death was preferable to becoming one of those groaning husks.

‘If I turn into one of those, I’ll be stuck here for all eternity.’

Becoming a Resident of the Abyss meant she could never return to her true form, Basara.

It was a permanent spiritual shackle.

A horrifying hex that would trap both flesh and spirit in this pit forever.

Thud—

Despite the weight of despair, Iarin kept walking.

She refused to stop searching for a loophole.

‘I can’t let it end like this.’

She had finally closed in on it.

The entity that held the answers to her life’s mysteries. The ultimate lead.

And now the world was telling her to surrender?

“… I am the Seven Lord Basara.”

She was not a creature built for quitting.

Unlike her peers among the lords, she wasn’t born a demon.

She was a Dragon God mutant.

An anomaly that was rejected by every faction.

She had clawed her way from the mud to stand as one of the Seven Lords.

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Her skin began to bloat, and dark, sickly marks started to bloom across her body.

“Ugh…”

Her lungs burned with the inhaled poison, making every breath a struggle.

She slumped against a jagged wall and let her eyelids fall shut.

… It wasn’t too late.

She could still kill herself right now and wake up in her primary body.

‘My entire existence has been a fight.’

Flashes of her past flickered in her mind.

The endless days spent fighting just to see the next sunrise.

The Dragon Gods had cast her out because she was a mutant.

Similarly, the demon race looked down upon the Dragon Gods.

How much blood had she spilled to reach the rank of Seven Lord?

She had validated her existence through sheer power and ascended to that throne, but…

‘Everything eventually turned gray.’

She was peerless.

She didn’t understand the concept of losing, nor did she know how to be bested.

This was because even she didn’t know the inherent vulnerabilities of a Dragon God.

A Dragon God who was unaware of her own flaws.

A true freak of nature.

Perhaps that was why.

At some point, combat had lost its luster.

She could predict every outcome with a glance; her enemies’ blades couldn’t even graze her. It was all so tedious.

The spark for living, the purpose of it all, had vanished.

‘Then I crossed paths with you.’

Wilhelm.

No, the one pulling Wilhelm’s strings.

She had perceived instantly that Wilhelm’s every movement was being guided by another’s hand.

They worked in tandem, chasing a standard of perfection.

Those motions were… intoxicating to behold.

It had breathed life back into her withered warrior’s heart.

‘And through you, I discovered the weakness I never knew I had.’

… Love, of all things.

To think she was capable of such a sentiment.

Initially, she assumed this feeling was for Wilhelm himself.

But the emotional resonance was clearly linked to the ‘hidden observer’ standing behind him.

‘You were the first person I couldn’t simply read and discard.’

Wilhelm was an open book.

But the ‘someone’ beyond him was a void.

It was her first experience encountering a being she couldn’t categorize, understand, or reconcile with, no matter how much she analyzed them.

That burning curiosity had manifested as her singular weakness.

Truthfully, she still wasn’t certain if this was love.

That was why she needed to see it through.

Meeting Phantom hadn’t triggered that same internal earthquake, but…

‘Just one more time…’

It had been different the moment Wilhelm’s blade pierced her heart.

“… That sensation from that day, I want to experience it again.”

She wanted to verify it once more.

To see if she was truly a being who could feel.

To see if there was a point to a life that had been nothing but a constant war.

But the opportunity was slipping away.

Time had run out.

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“Try to keep me interested. You, the imitation.”